I don't think that particular version is a very good choice -- it's got a heavy racial component that's entirely unrelated to your much more reasonable point.

I think your version of the fable would be more like "come winter, the grasshopper has no food or shelter. The ants can't help but notice him suffering out in the cold, and some of them say, 'well, I know he was a total twit, but we can't just let him die, can we?' They successfully agitate to get the queen to give the grasshopper a percentage of the colony's hoard to see him through the cold months. However, the following year, rather than changing his ways, the grasshopper continues to play all summer, expecting that the ants will continue to take care of him in the winter."

In my version, I'd throw in a lot more grasshoppers, some who goof off all summer and some who are diligent but are simply unable to collect enough to see themselves through the winter, for lack of ability or opportunity. The ants don't have a good way to separate one from the other, and they argue about whether it would be better to let them all suffer so that the lazy ones would be incentivized or to support them all so that the simply unlucky ones wouldn't die from their lack of luck.

Well, beggars can't be choosers. I'll be honest, I didn't really consider the racial aspect. I guess I'm naive, but that stuff doesn't really occur to me. As you say, it's a more complicated situation than the fable presents, but then, that's how it is with fables, I think. They're good at broad strokes. It's up to us to work out the details.

I guess since I trend left, I'm probably more sensitive to that sort of thing. The bits about the "NAAGB" and "green bias" seemed pretty obvious to me, but YMMV, of course.

Anyway, to support your point, I remember back when Clinton was getting ready to go along with the Republican congress and ratchet back welfare, one of the networks did a special report that interviewed a number of fairly long-term welfare recipients (long enough that their benefits were threatened). I was surprised by how many of the interviewees were perfectly able 20-somethings who just hadn't gotten their act together. The interviewer asked one of them what he was going to do when he lost his welfare check, and he shrugged his shoulders and said "I guess I'll have to go out and get a job." Up till then, I had been more or less in the standard liberal camp, but that report made me much more receptive to the reform plan.

In an ideal world, we'd all be part of one or another small community that looked after its own and that could distinguish between those who needed help and those who needed a kick in the pants. In the absence of that, I don't know how one would go about designing a federal or state system that would be able to deal appropriately with both categories.

"In an ideal world, we'd all be part of one or another small community that looked after its own and that could distinguish between those who needed help and those who needed a kick in the pants. In the absence of that, I don't know how one would go about designing a federal or state system that would be able to deal appropriately with both categories."

Could point, and I think you answer your own question. The problem with welfare is separating the able-bodies from those who are simply lazy and use welfare as a crutch.

The answer is, never do welfare from a federal level, and maybe less from a state level. Why do we need centralization in welfare? The answer lies in the "small community" that you mention. Do welfare and really democracy, on a lower level.

Oops, "Could point" should be "Good point." Apparently I type based on how things sound in my head, and I didn't hear myself correctly.

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